VIJAYAWADA: National Egg Coordination Committee (NECC) is conducting awareness camps and inspections on the ideal ways of storing eggs and cooking them for serving school students (midday meal) in government schools across the State. The State has 45,000 government schools and 450 junior colleges, where eggs are served to the students five times a week.
Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, NECC advisor K Balaswamy, said, “We feel bad as consumption of eggs is projected in a bad way. We often receive complaints that the school students are served spoilt eggs. The eggs come in a perfect condition, but get spoilt due to improper storing and cooking.” It may be noted that NECC officials are planning to celebrate the World Egg Day on October 12 in Vijayawada. “We are conducting awareness camps and inspections in 400 schools.
We have come to know that the agents handling the midday meals are not storing the eggs properly. As they purchase eggs in bulk, they store them in rice tins, cupboards and the like to keep them safe from rats and insects. During storing, the eggs might get spoiled, and the workers unaware of the condition of the eggs, cook them along with the good ones, resulting in a mess,” Balaswamy said.
Ruling out any side effects or cholesterol issues due to consumption of eggs, Balaswamy dismissed speculations on rubber eggs, plastic eggs and China eggs. He said that there are no such eggs in the market, adding cooking the eggs for longer periods of time lead to such appearances.